


on ne peut pas fabriquer la vérité

by portions_forfox



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 04:12:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/pseuds/portions_forfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry calls her sometimes now on her old, archaic telephone, late at night or early in the morning. She always says, “Harry, why’ve you called?” and he always laughs, soft and miserable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on ne peut pas fabriquer la vérité

**Author's Note:**

> this came out of nowhere, just a simple plot bunny about harry and hermione and muggle things and telephones. written to get back into the swing of things, because i’ve been busy lately and fic has taken a backseat. au post-deathly hallows where ron was killed in the battle of hogwarts.

In April he buys her a telephone and brings it by.

“What’s this?” she asks, brushing over the side of it with her hand. It’s black, and round, and old-fashioned, with the dial pad and the cord and everything.

“It’s a telephone, Hermione,” Harry answers, raising his eyebrows at her, that thing he does. “You know, like, to talk with?”

Hermione flushes red, indignant. “I know perfectly well what a telephone is.”

“I know.”

“I was raised by Muggles too, you know.”

“I know.”

“I’m not Ron.”

Harry freezes, mid-breath. “I know,” he says after a moment.

Hermione watches his careful eyes, scanning the walls of her kitchen, the sink and the cabinets and the small wooden table, three-legged and aching under the weight of fifty books. She smooths down her skirt, recovers. “I only meant to ask _why_ ,” she says, “ _why_ , Harry, are you giving me a telephone.”

Harry looks befuddled, tilting his head at her: “Why?”

“Yes, why,” she repeats.

“Why why?” he asks her.

“Why why?” she echoes, frustrated, “why why? _Why_ because we have the Floo, we have owls, we have—we have—sodding _apparition_ , Harry!” She waves her arms disgruntledly, and Harry smiles when she swears. She smooths her hands down her skirt again. “Why, then,” she continues, much more calmly, “would you give me a telephone?”

“Oh,” Harry says. “Why that.”

“—and not even a _new_ one, at that,” Hermione grumbles under her breath. “Honestly, what year is this from, 1948? Have you got a time turner, Harry? Is that it?”

“That’s not it.”

“I didn’t think so.” She sighs. Harry seems utterly unfazed.

“Do you still want to know why?” he asks her.

“Why what?”

“Why I got you the telephone,” he explains, patient. Hermione looks down at it, sitting patiently on a pile of books from the Ministry Library on arithmancy, pepperup potion, and astronomy. It stares up at her with complete composure.

“Oh,” she says. “Yes. Why that.”

“Because,” Harry tells her, and steps forward to briefly touch his hand to her waist, press his lips chastely to her temple. He pulls back again and smiles, soft and loving and sad. “I thought I might like to call you sometime.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One summer before the war Harry called her up on her parents’ telephone. She was outside in the garden wearing her green shorts, white top, and her mother came outside onto the lawn.

“Hermione, dear,” she said, holding one hand over the receiver and pressing it to her shoulder, “you’ve got a call from a friend.”

Hermione shifted her legs in the grass, feeling the blades tickle at her thighs and knees and stomach where her shirt was riding up. She held her book open with one hand. “A call?” she repeated. “From a friend?”

“Yes, dear,” her mother said, and, leaning forward, whispered conspiratorially, “ _and he’s wonderfully polite, too_.”

Hermione held out her hand, perplexed. Her mother handed her the phone and Hermione waited until she was inside to hold the receiver to her ear. “Hello?”

“Hermione?”

“Harry?”

“Hermione,” Harry sighed with relief.

“Harry,” Hermione sighed back. A moment lapsed in silence. Hermione cleared her throat. “Could you—” she started to ask, then backed off. “Could you hear what my mother was saying?” she asked him carefully.

“Every word,” he replied.

“Ah,” Hermione nodded. “Of course.” A silence fell again. Hermione kicked her bare feet behind her in the air, closing the book with her hand still stuck in it. The sun was just beginning to go down. “Harry,” she said, “why’ve you called?”

“I—” he started to say, and then giggled.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“ _What_?”

“Nothing, really.” He could most likely visualise her tightly pursed lips miles away, and explained, still laughing, “ ’S just a bit funny, isn’t it. What you’ve just said.”

Hermione snuffed her nose. “I can’t begin to imagine what’s possibly funny about anything I’ve just said.”

“You said, ‘Harry, why’ve you called?’”

“Yes, _and_?” Harry burst into a fit of chortles on the other end. “What’s so funny about that?”

“Nothing, it’s just so—normal.” Hermione nearly froze cold at the use of the word. Her legs ceased kicking in the air, and she sniffled once. “‘Why’ve you called?’” Harry repeated gleefully. “It’s something Muggles say to each other all the time. We’re just two Muggles having a chat over the phone.”

Hermione started to chuckle, just a bit. “We could easily be just that,” she said. “You in your uncle’s house on Privet Drive, me with my parents here in Lancaster. Just this morning I bought an apple juice at Sainsbury’s with lunch. An _apple juice_ , Harry. And I bought it in _pounds_.”

“That’s not half as bad as me,” Harry returned. “Did I tell you I’ve been watching telly lately?”

Hermione gasped, horrified. “You haven’t!”

“I have,” he confirmed. “And not even the respectable kind. EastEnders is a terrible show, Hermione. Never watch it.”

“EastEnders!” Hermione exclaimed, aghast. “I expected better of you, Harry!”

“I expected better of my _self_ ,” he agreed. “It’s quite addicting, though.”

“Oh, I’m sure, I’m sure it is.”

Harry’s breathing shakes in soft laughter for a few more moments, and then he heaves a deep breath into the phone.

“Harry,” says Hermione, trying again, “why’ve you called?”

Harry doesn’t say anything for a moment.

“You know Ron’s away on holiday,” he says.

“I know.”

“The whole lot of them, all the Weasleys.”

“I know.”

“In India.”

“Yes.”

“They love red hair there.”

“I’m sure they do,” says Hermione, and she slides her fingers out of the page of her book.

“I wouldn’t’ve called him anyway,” Harry admits, his tone tongue-in-cheek. “He hasn’t the faintest idea how to use a telephone without shouting into the receiver.”

“Trust me,” laughs Hermione, “I know.” Out across the street the sun has almost entirely set, leaving the grass against her skin cold and sticky. She feels goose-bumps rise on her arms as a pulsing buzz of nightlife stirs to life around her in the garden. She lays her cheek down on the hard, comforting surface of her book, closes her eyes to the gray-blue dark.

“He reminds me of . . . ,” Harry is saying into the phone, and she realises now the tinny sound of his voice, thin and wavering and distant through the line. The connection’s not that great. “ . . . Hogwarts. And Quidditch. And pumpkin juice. And Diagon Alley and the Weird Sisters and the smell of butterbeer and the clink of Dumbledore raising his glass for a toast and the crackling fire in the common room when it’s warm and fading after dark—” He stops, and Hermione holds her breath, the sharp corner of _New Theory of Numerology_ digging into her cheek, listening to the sound of his silence, the absence of his words. “He reminds me of magic.” Harry pauses; “I love magic.” Inhaling sharply, he coughs and clears his throat. “But sometimes I think,” he says, “sometimes I think—”

“—Harry, don’t say—”

“—Sometimes I think it’s brought me more trouble than good.”

Hermione lets out the breath she’s been holding, long and hesitant and slow. She winces. “Don’t say that.”

“Don’t say it? Or don’t mean it?”

“Either. Both.”

There are fireflies humming now, nowhere to be seen. The grayness has turned to black, and inside the house the lights are warm and bright and welcoming, the TV on in the sitting room. Hermione’s starting to get cold out here in her shorts.

“Do you want to know why I called?” Harry asks her softly.

“Sure,” Hermione sighs, nearly giving up. “Sure, go ahead.”

“Because it makes me feel normal,” Harry answers simply. “To call you on the phone.” Hermione closes her eyes again, and it’s almost as if Harry’s voice comes through stronger than ever, still tinged by miles of distance. “You remind me of home.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After Ron died, Mrs. Weasley took Hermione by the arm and said, her eyes brimming with tears and her touch warm, “Why don’t you come live with us for a while, dear?” her gaze so imploring, so earnest. “It might be good for you. For all of us.”

But Hermione shook her head. “I need to be alone,” she told Mrs. Weasley, even though it was nowhere near the truth. She didn’t need to be alone. She needed to be with Ron, with him bickering and shouting and getting underfoot and cracking jokes at inappropriate moments and getting a crick in his shoulder from keeping his arm in an uncomfortable position all night just so he could hold her hand. What she needed wasn’t an option anymore. She didn’t need solitude, she needed Ron.

She moved into a Muggle flat in East London and kept her job at the Ministry, just so she could maintain some semblance of a remaining tie to the Magical World. She felt it was an obligation.

After Ron died, Harry couldn’t be with Ginny anymore. Ginny comes round to visit sometimes and makes tea with a few flicks of her wand and shakes her head at Hermione doing the dishes by hand. Ginny tells her that in the rubble, in the aftermath, she said, “Harry, do you even love me?” and he said “Of course I do,” like it was a silly question to even ask, and Ginny said, “Then why can’t you be with me?” and Harry opened his mouth to speak and closed it again and opened it and the words were cracking but he said do you understand Ginny do you understand the way I loved him and Ginny said no and he said then I can’t answer your question.

Harry came by the first month. He looked absolutely awful.

“Why can’t you hold a decent conversation?” Hermione asked him then, irritated, hands closed nervous round a cup of tea, and he said, “Because the only person I’ve spoken to all month is Luna,” and Hermione said, “She’s all you’ll talk to nowadays,” and Harry said, “I’m talking to you now, aren’t I?” and Hermione felt tempted to ask _Harry, do you even love me?_ but she didn’t.

A moment passed in terse silence. Finally Harry looked up.

“Ask me again,” he said, his green eyes boring hard and bright and terrible into her gaze, containing all the secrets she’d ever held and all she ever would and it was absolutely dreadful to look at.

She clutched her teacup so hard her fingers trembled. Stared back at him. “Why,” she asked, face steely blank, “can’t you hold a decent conversation?”

“Because Ron is dead,” Harry answered, blank-faced, without missing a beat, and Hermione calmly set down her teacup and burst into tears.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harry calls her sometimes now on her old, archaic telephone, late at night or early in the morning. She always says, “Harry, why’ve you called?” and he always laughs, soft and miserable.

Sometimes they go for walks through Central London, stopping for fish and chips with Coke when they can. They feel utterly, untetheringly normal.

Harry calls in May and Hermione answers, third ring, five in the morning.

“You’re up,” says Hermione.

“I’m always up. I don’t sleep.”

“What have I told you, there are _spells_ for that,” Hermione chastises. “Perfectly simple incantation and you’re off to sleep in no time.”

“Spells, spells,” Harry interrupts. “Is it just me or do they seem like such a hassle these days?”

“That’s sort of the exact opposite of what a spell is designed to be, Harry.”

“Fine then, it’s just me.”

Hermione sighs, looking down at the kettle boiling on the stove, all on its own. “No,” she confesses. “It’s not just you.”

“Did you hear,” Harry says, “that Luna and Neville are getting married?”

“I did,” says Hermione, and she’s careful with her words. “And how does that . . . affect you?” she asks, innocently—Harry laughs.

“Not much at all, Hermione. I sort of knew the thing with Luna would never work out.”

Hermione has to hold back a sigh of relief. “Good.”

“I need her too badly as a friend and mentor to ever shit all over that with a relationship.”

“Yes,” Hermione agrees tentatively, “that is the most eloquent way of putting it.”

“Can you imagine if I had to go a whole week without asking Luna what the hell I should do with my life?” Harry laughs, loudly. “I’d probably die.”

“Yes,” Hermione agrees, “you’d probably die.” A moment passes. “Harry,” says Hermione, “why’ve you called?”

He sighs, very slowly and very heavily. “It’s May,” he says. “Second of May.”

“I know.”

“So then you know why I called.”

“Yes.”

“But you needed to hear me say it.”

“Yes.”

The kettle on the stove begins to whine and Hermione pulls it off, the first beams of gray-white morning beginning to slant through the kitchen window.

“Hermione,” Harry says suddenly, intensely, “do you ever wonder, if he were still alive today, would you be with him,” and he lets out a short, humorless laugh, “or would I.”

“We both would, probably,” Hermione answers, easy, soothing. The words slip out all too easily, and she wants to take them back as soon as they’re said, eyes going wide as she fumbles with the kettle and nearly scalds herself. ( _This_ , she thinks, _is what magic is supposed to be good for._ )

“D’you think?” Harry presses, sounding fascinated with the idea. “How would that work?”

“Oh, Harry, it was only a slip of the tongue. Ignore me.”

“Was it?”

“Yes. It was.”

She can almost see him shrugging. “All right.” He breathes in, then says, “Shall we go for fish and chips today, then? Noon? At the usual place?”

“Yes, I—” Hermione stops short. She’s just started pouring her tea, laying the teacup on the table, and the telephone itself has caught her eye. She’s holding the receiver with no hands between her chin and shoulder and she’s just made a pot of tea by herself. The black cord dangles to the floor. She loves him. “Harry!” she announces, astounded, “I love you!”

He laughs, warm, on the other end. “I know,” he says. “I thought you might.”

Hermione sets down the teapot by the cup (which is overflowing). “How does this work?” she wants to know, then, more carefully, “Is this wrong? It feels wrong. It feels like . . . adultery. Is that wrong?”

Harry’s frowning, she can tell. “I don’t know.” He starts to say something else, then just repeats, “I don’t know.”

“Harry,” she says into the phone, “what do we do now?”

He sighs, and a long silence follows. “Well,” he says finally, “I believe I should come over there to yours, and we should have a chat over tea, and perhaps at the end of the chat I could kiss you, and it will probably feel awful and terribly wrong the first time, but then perhaps I’ll kiss you again another day and it will feel a little bit less awful until eventually it doesn’t feel so awful at all.” He stops. “Shall I come by Floo or by bike?”

“Bike,” she tells him, smiling. “Definitely bike.”

 


End file.
